WASHINGTON-The high-tech community is urging Congress to complete work on the DTV Transition Act of 2005, which has been included in a larger budget reconciliation bill, before Congress goes home for the year.
“We urge Congress to continue its process, through the House-Senate conference committee, to send a final version of the DTV Transition Act of 2005 to the president’s desk by year’s end,” reads the letter signed by 13 trade association leaders and sent to every member of Congress on Monday. “We must now translate into law the broad consensus that a hard date in early 2009 is a critical imperative for all stakeholders.”
Congress is considering the DTV bill as part of the 2006 budget reconciliation process. The House bill sets the DTV hard date at Dec. 31, 2008, with an auction of spectrum freed up by the transition starting Jan. 7, 2009. The Senate passed its budget reconciliation bill setting the hard date at April 7, 2009, with the auction starting Jan. 28, 2008.
The two versions have to be reconciled or changed since both chambers must pass identical bills. Public safety is expected to get 24 megahertz as part of the DTV conversion and the rest is expected to be used for commercial operations. Some of the spectrum has already been auctioned.
“House and Senate conferees now face an historic opportunity to unlock the promise this spectrum holds for first responders, wireless-broadband users, rural consumers and TV viewers,” said Janice Obuchowski, executive director of the High Tech DTV Coalition, which released the letter Thursday morning.
Critics continue to lambast Congress over the lack of public-safety interoperability. The 9/11 Commission said it might raise the failing grade it gave public safety if public-safety groups put the two megahertz they are supposed to receive toward interoperability.
As part of the Senate’s examination of decency issues, cable operators have said they would offer a “family” tier on digital cable. Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, said he was not concerned about the family tier only being available on digital cable because the DTV bill would make that more accessible.
“I think the advantage is to digital and Congress has already legislated that. We’re going to move into digital very soon, so I don’t see any temporary advantage or disadvantage at all. We will go ahead with the spectrum sales. And, we will go ahead with converting to digital and I hope we’ll get enough money through the spectrum sales to provide set-top boxes so that everyone will have a digital signal by the end of this decade,” said Stevens.
